First-Period Fantasy

I’ve been obsessed with the Downing-Bradstreet house (which once occupied the site of another current obsession, the Phillips Library) for quite some time: consequently I took advantage of some extra time during this past spring break to dig a little deeper into its history. Actually, the history is easy: it’s the projection that is difficult. We know that this “mansion house” was built by 1640 and demolished more than a century later, but our only image of it was created by a man who was born after its demolition and whose source is unknown: did it really look like this?

Wow: that’s a big house with a lot of windows, gables, glass, and finials. What in the world are those “flanking towers reminiscent of feudal days”, in the words of Frank Cousins? Are they made of glass? Indeed they were according to Robert Rantoul’s 1888 essay on the “New Domain” of the Essex Institute, which describes what preceded its buildings on “Downing Block”: it had two massive sets of chimneys and also two transparent, hollow columns of lead sash and diamond glass, great lanthorns (?????), one of either side of the front door, for lighting up the ample grounds in front, and these rose from the foundation to the roof and contained a cupboard-door at each floor of the house for inserting candles or other illuminating appliances on occasion of festivity or other need of light. Wow again. All of this illumination, combined with the scale and detail of the house, makes it appear more like a romantic fantasy of a seventeenth-century house than an actual seventeenth-century structure, especially as it was situated in frontier Salem. This “grate” house, either real or embellished, was built by London barrister Emmanuel Downing, the brother-in-law of Governor John Winthrop, who eventually returned to England leaving the mansion to his daughter Ann as part of the dowry for her marriage to Captain Joseph Gardner, who was killed in the Great Swamp Fight of King Philip’s War in December of 1675. In the following year, the Widow Gardner married Simon Bradstreet, the last Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, whose first wife Anne, America’s first published poet, had died in 1672. Bradstreet returned to Salem (his port of entry to the New World) and took up residence in the Mansion until his death in 1697. Both he and Ann are buried in the Old Burying Ground on Charter Street. The now-Bradstreet House was passed down in the Ropes family for a few generations, but ultimately it was transformed into a tavern (the Globe), divided, and demolished in 1753. The artist of its iconic image, Marblehead painter and muralist Samuel Bartoll (1765-1835) created both the painting above and a similar one of the Corwin (Roger William House in the 19th century; “Witch House” in the 20th) in 1819-1820: what was the basis of his conception?

Frank Cousins photograph of the Bartoll painting; 1930 Port of Salem map, Boston Public Library & illustration from Lossing’s History of the United States of America (1913); Samuel Bartoll’s Corwin House, Peabody Essex Museum.

I have no answers to the questions I am asking, but it’s still important to ask them, as these idealized (?) images guided so many restoration projects later on. Nathaniel Hawthorne likely saw the Bartoll paintings in Salem: they influenced his vision in the HouseoftheSevenGables, which later inspired the material transformation of the Turner-Ingersoll mansion into the more “picturesque” House of the Seven Gables by Caroline Emmerton and Joseph Everett Chandler in 1908-1910. Later in the twentieth century, the Corwin House underwent a similar transformation—back (or forward) to the Bartoll vision, with a few less finials.

More idealized American imagery from Samuel Bartoll: Painted Hitchcock Chairs, James D. Julia Auctions; and a Fireboard Depicting the Landing of the Pilgrims, 1825, Peabody Essex Museum.

“Lanthorn” is indeed an archaic spelling of “lantern,” and, not incidentally in this context, the term “lantern” can also describe a “cupola”–another glazed structure intended in part to convey light.

As for the degree to which Bartoll went beyond his (oral history?) evidence to gothicize his depiction of the Downing-Bradstreet House, given his 1760s birthdate I would have thought his artistic inclinations would more likely lean toward the Neoclassical than to romantic flights of fancy.

While there were American stirrings of interest in “gothick” decoration in the early years of the 19th century, the revival per se was still a ways off when he painted the Downing-Bradstreet House. (For example, Salem’s gothic stone First Church dates from 1836, and the gothicizing additions to the Pickering from the 1840s, if Wikipedia is correct (the Pickering site doesn’t give a date for those alterations).

So I am wondering how likely it is that Bartoll would have been inclined to render an old Salem House even more picturesquely “medieval” (or really, Tudorish) than the sources he was using suggested…

Tim: Sidney Perley proved that Roger Williams never lived in the Corwin House in 1903 or something like that—so now we call it (unfortunately) the Witch Houses–it’s of a similar date as the Bradstreet House but was restored in the 1940s. I definitely think these images were inspirational.

You are definitely right about the inspiration, I thought of the House of Seven Gables immediately when I saw your first drawing! The Wikipedia article for Roger Williams has a postcard depicting the Corwin House in the midst of storefronts, even the roofline looks different.

I think cousins was on to something when he mentioned they were reminiscent of feudal days. There is a book called “Houses of the Gentry” which has lots of images of English manor houses. In that book there is a house very much like the Downing house, including the glazed towers. There definitely seems there was some early emulation of manor houses here during the first period like the Clark and Hutchinson houses, Boston, Spencer Pierce Little, etc. and it would make sense a important town like Salem would have its own imitators.

The Vol II, No 1 issue of Gardner’s Beacon had a little information about Ann and Joseph. The house had been a wedding gift from her mother (with concurrence from her father). After Joseph died and prior to marrying Simon, Ann drew up a pre-nup for them. This agreement is noted as being remarkable in that it was a pre-nup and that a “new woman” of today would “have a difficult task in equaling in those regards her counterpart” of 225 years ago. When she died, Ann left the property to her nephew, son of Joseph’s brother, Samuel.

Quotes from Thomas Gardner (Planter) – 1907. Joseph and Ann are in a growing list of those who need special treatment. These are, for the most part, without descendants, hence having more potential to be forgotten.

I just added another forgotten one to the list just two days ago. Patriot Benjamin West died at Bunker Hill (1776). His death was not recognized until over 100 years later due to the efforts of a nephew. Of course, we had the loyalist Benjamin West (painter, giving knighthood, wanted peerage) getting the attention. I’m about to do a post on the TGS, Inc. blog about the patriot (kin of Roger Conant).

Part of the special group, as well, are all of those whose graves are lost (at last count, we are approaching a couple hundred – need to do a complete inventory). Imagine, this, in little Essex County. To me, a newcomer, this is a much deeper story than the witch bit.